After Britain and France signed the Entente Cordiale in 1904, the Kaiser asked Count Alfred von Schlieffen to devise a plan allowing for victory in the event of a two-front war. The Schlieffen Plan took advantage of the expected differences in the speed of mobilisation between three countries: Germany, France in the west, and Russia in the east. The Plan depended on Germany’s ability to quickly mobilise troops and invade France before France could fully mobilise to defend itself, and then turn on Russia, seen as the slowest of the three to mobilise, before the Russians were ready.
Schlieffen believed Germany’s chances for victory depended on a massive strike through northern France to encircle Paris. It was also assumed France would attack Germany through Alsace-Lorraine and that France would mobilise faster than Russia. With Austrian support, a relatively small German force would hold the Russians in East Prussia and Russia would be dealt with when France was defeated.
The Plan was designed to avoid a two-front war by concentrating German troops in the west and quickly defeating France by encircling Paris from the west, within 6 weeks – before the ‘Russian steamroller’ would have the chance to mobilise in East Prussia. Most of the French army would be captured defending Paris or trying to invade Germany through Alsace-Lorraine, forcing France to surrender. The French province of Alsace-Lorraine, which had a mix of French and German populations, was absorbed into the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. It had previously been in French possession for nearly 200 years, and France vowed to reclaim it.
After defeating France, German troops would use France’s modernised rail system to move troops to defeat Russia before they had the chance to fully mobilise. In 1870, France had been defeated in a few weeks and so was not considered as much of a threat in the long term as the Russian Empire which was expected to be difficult to defeat if the Tsar was allowed the necessary time to mobilise the Russian army to the full extent. Kaiser Wilhelm II is quoted as having said, “Paris for lunch, dinner at St. Petersburg”.
When Moltke became German Chief of Staff in 1906 after Schlieffen’s retirement, he made some changes to the plan. He thought it was too risky but it was too ingrained in German military thinking to be completely abandoned. Schlieffen had planned 90 percent of German military forces to attack France and 10 percent to attack Russia. Moltke’s modifications included transferring significant numbers of troops away from the main force entering France from the north in order to fortify the force in Alsace-Lorraine and the Russian border.
Schlieffen had also planned for the attack to go through Belgium and Luxembourg. Belgian neutrality was guaranteed by Britain in 1839 so the success of the plan depended on Britain not supporting Belgium when Germany invaded. Schlieffen had assumed that the success of a massive surprise attack against France would be enough to deter Britain from becoming involved in a continental war. With Moltke’s modifications to the plan, German forces would enter France through only Belgium and Luxembourg instead of the Netherlands. According to Moltke, the Belgian army would be unable to resist a powerful German military and German forces would rapidly enter France.
The key elements of the plan as it had been adapted by 1912 were:
- the right wing of the German army would mobilise in the north and invade France by advancing through neutral Belgium;
- the smaller left wing would hold the French army on the Rhine border against the expected attack through Alsace-Lorraine – France’s Plan XVII
- German right wing would quickly advance through Belgium by taking over Belgian railways, then the German armies in the north would wheel around to encircle Paris from the west;
- with Paris taken, the German armies would continue to wheel around to trap the French armies which had attacked the German border through Alsace Lorraine
- France would be forced to surrender and the German armies could then be transferred to the eastern front to deal with Russia.
However, fatal flaws in the fabric of the Schlieffen Plan – and further changes made in its implementation – led to its failure, out of which grew stalemate on the Western Front, ushering in a new era of trench warfare.
Sources
Priya Karan - null
Join the Conversation